Pica: a behavior beyond accepted cultural traditions, consisting of constant (i.e. for more thatn one month) ingestion of inedible substances, which are inappropriate for that developmental stage or age
................-American Psychiatric Association (1994)
..................Diagnositic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. DMS IV, Washington, DC.

.....Every morning, the artist sits down in front of an English/Spanish dictionary and, following alphabetic order, picks up a word. She cuts the English portion and eats it.
.....“pica” is a work-in-progress performance that the artist started a few weeks after arriving to the US, which she will probably finish when she leaves the country again. As an attempt to embody a non-native language, the artist eats one different English word each day. In a very intimate gesture, through a stylized repetition of acts in time, she attempts to remove the disembodied power of having to speak a foreign and “artificial” language. But also, perhaps, by digesting English words, she also attempts to digest the simple implications of being a Hispanic speaker in the US.


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